Derrick Deacon was convicted of murdering teenager Andrew Wynn in 1989. It wasn’t until 2012 he was given a re-trail, then in 2013 was finally freed. Deacon spent 24 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, and now he is suing the state of New York for $25 million.

The crime was 25 years ago. Deacon was at the scene of a robbery in an apartment building in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Prospect Lefferts. Over two decades later when a trial was immediately granted, it was because an FBI agent conducted a search and a Jamaican gang member revealed an affiliate for Wynn’s death, a witness recanted her statement. Reportedly, it took the jury only nine minutes to acquit Deacon, ending his 25 years to life sentence.

He’s suing for unspecified damages. He told the New York Post he wanted his former prosecutors to “pay for every day it made me suffer behind the wall for no reason”, and his lawyer Earl Ward stood with him in commenting that past detectives performed a “gross misconduct.” It’s frankly unbelievable that is took this long for Deacon to be freed, but it’s a spine-tingling cycle that New York has exonerated or “corrected” too many times. In 2013, David McCallum was freed after 28 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, starting his jail sentence at only sixteen. Deacon isn’t just sitting home being grateful to visit a park again at his leisure. He’s fighting back for the twenty-fours years he’s lost since 1990.

The case is pending and no public response has been released from New York state.